Kingdom Hearts Releases on Steam to Big Success Despite its Age
Finally, players have been able to embark on the ever-sought-after KINGDOM HEARTS franchise and experience it in all of its glory (or at least most of it — RIP Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory). After three years of being part of The Epic Games Store as a timed exclusive, Square Enix has sworn off exclusivity and joined the highly popular platform — Steam!
On release, the title actually received a lot of success, despite the controversies surrounding the port in itself. Though many users aren't struggling at all with the ports (myself included), there are some GPUs and PCs that simply can't seem to handle the experience, crashing continuously. Notably, those who have AMD cards (namely, 7800xt and 7900xt) have been struggling with a known bug that creates endless crashes. This has led to a surge of negative reviews, but it hasn't stopped it from being a massively popular release.
The first title of the bunch is none other than the original KINGDOM HEARTS, whichreleased way back in 2002 — a staggering 22 years ago! — and the title is still being loved by many. Whether this is because of nostalgia or the actual merit of the game is irrelevant in this case, as it's received quite a lot of love from fans; not even the crashes could bring down the review score too much. KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- has released to 71% positive reviews with 1,376 total, a feat for a title so old.
It isn't just the original receiving love, either — all three of the experiences have been met with a lot of love, but namely, the underestimated and oft-overlooked KINGDOM HEARTS III is finally getting some attention. This title released to many calling the experience "mid" overall, though, on Steam, it's garnered quite a lot of success in the form of positive reviews — 92% total review score with 179 reviews, which means it's quite a few reviews away from the prestigious Overwhelmingly Positive tag, but not nearly as much as it could have been for the underrated latest release.
Each title also came out to quite a big player base — here are the peak concurrent players of each of the games (at the time of writing):
- KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- — 11,152
- KINGDOM HEARTS HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue — 195
- KINGDOM HEARTS III + Re Mind (DLC) — 1,274
It comes as no surprise that the first pack (which also happens to be the cheapest one) has garnered the most success. A lot of nostalgia can be found here, with the original title leading all the way up to the second. And even for newcomers, it makes sense to start at the very beginning of the journey, and it's been quite famous, especially if you take into account the age of the titles.
If you want to get started on your Kingdom Hearts journey, then you can do so now through Steam!
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